As part of its probe into Kawhi Leonard’s and the Clippers‘ agreements with Aspiration, the NBA is investigating whether the Clippers improperly covered expenses for Leonard while not being reimbursed, Mike Vorkunov reports for The Athletic citing anonymous sources.
According to Vorkunov, Wachtell Lipton – the law firm leading the investigation – has also looked into whether Leonard had an endorsement deal with a separate company that has, to this point, gone unnoticed.
The Clippers, who have been accused of circumventing the salary cap to pay Leonard beyond his NBA salary via a no-show endorsement deal with Aspiration (a team sponsor), have denied any wrongdoing, claiming that the team and owner Steve Ballmer were victims of the fraud perpetrated by co-founder Joe Sanberg, who has been sentenced to 14 years in prison.
However, Vorkunov reports that some team executives around the league increasingly believe that the Clippers will face some sort of punishment from the NBA.
While Vorkunov doesn’t provide specifics on the potential improperly covered expenses and second endorsement deal that the NBA’s investigators are looking into, he takes a deep dive into Leonard’s and the Clippers’ relationships with Aspiration, sharing some previously unreported details.
According to Vorkunov, some former Aspiration employees have pushed back on the idea that Leonard’s lucrative endorsement agreement with the company was always meant to be a no-show job. As he details, there were discussions about the usage of Leonard’s likeness for promotional material for Aspiration, including one potential campaign inspired by Groot, a tree-based character from The Avengers franchise. The company made mock-ups of the concept, but the creative team was eventually told to stop pursuing it.
“Stop thinking about Kawhi,” one employee said they were told, according to Vorkunov. “This feels like a dead end.”
“Nothing ever came from it,” another former employee said of the efforts to build a promotional campaign around Leonard. “I’m not sure why it died, whether it was on our end or his end or if we couldn’t figure out a concept.”
The Clippers, Leonard, and the Raptors are all heavily invested in the outcome of the league’s investigation, given that Toronto has a pending trade agreement in place to acquire the two-time Finals MVP. That deal won’t be completed until the NBA’s probe wraps up in order to ensure that Toronto won’t take on the risk of any penalty assessed to Leonard.
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